Rationale / Vision
History plays a fundamental role in living out our school vision.
Finding our voice:
During our history curriculum children will have opportunities to develop their vocabulary, grow in self-confidence and be able to communicate effectively about the past.
Living in Community and service:
Through our history curriculum children will learn about the past and what impact significant events and people have had on the world around them today. Children will explore different parts of the past including a local history study.
Growing in wisdom:
Through our history curriculum children will flourish in historical understanding and disciplinary skills. They will develop their understanding of historical language, memory, and experience to grasp concepts of change over time, connect their identity to history, and make sense of the world.
At St Mary’s, we believe that History is key in developing a deep understanding of the world around them and in forming a sense of identity through making connections to the past.
The Primary National Curriculum is used to plan St Mary’s School History curriculum and is well-sequenced and knowledge is valued and specified. Substantive and disciplinary knowledge are intertwined and revisited to ensure that children have a firm understanding of key concepts:
Substantive Knowledge:
Pupils building a foundation of historical facts, developing chronological understanding, and learning key vocabulary and concepts.
Disciplinary Knowledge:
Pupils develop key historical skills through the study of specific periods, people and events.
The disciplinary knowledge developed is:
- Cause and consequence: history is comprised of events, which have causes and which have subsequent consequences. Historical events can have long-lasting, and at time permanent, consequences (for example, current place names in West Yorkshire are influenced by the linguistic changes brought about by the Viking invasion of Britain).
- Continuity and change in and between periods: different historical periods demonstrate continuity with earlier periods, yet changes between periods as well (for example, the role of energy production in an industrial country remains, yet coal production in the UK has declined significantly in the past 40 years).
- Similarities and differences within periods: within a historical period (such as the reign of Queen Elizabeth II), there can be and is significant change (for example the Role of King Henry VIII compared with King Charles III).
- Significance of events and people: impactful historical events can occur because of long-term structural changes, but also because of decisions taken by influential individuals (for example, the decisions taken by Alexander the Great during his rule over Ancient Greece).
- Children will develop their chronological understanding of history through the use of classroom timelines, which show the historical sequence of topics studied in each year group, as well as the hall timeline, which presents events from the beginning of history to the present day. These timelines enable children to place their learning within a broader historical context.
The history curriculum at St Mary’s aims to:
- Develop pupils coherent chronological understanding
- Explore significant aspects of world history
- Understand historical concepts
- Learn how to be inquisitive like a historian